
Garden Head
17 FOLLOWERS
Gardening in and around Zone 6-7 in the midAtlantic northeast for 15 years. I write about Gardens and tell stories about plants as part of my actual job, and in my spare time I think about plants, read about plants, buy plants, poke at plants, eat plants, and plant plants. If left to my own devices I will binge old episodes of Gardener's World.
Garden Head
1w ago
As of January 1, gas leaf blowers were banned in our city, (Halleluliah!) but this does not mean the campaign will simply blow over. The legislative part is moving along, but the public information campaign is now in full swing among both residents and landscapers. The lack of information about the damaging effects of removing ..read more
Garden Head
1w ago
I always struggle with planting plans. I’m not a map person and I like to figure things out in real time, but when applying for grants, or communicating ideas to people you’re trying to evangelise about the benefits of native plants, it’s always best to show your work. It seems like most gardeners like to ..read more
Garden Head
3M ago
This is how I told my twelve year old daughter that Trump is now her president: A lot of people voted for Donald Trump. A lot of them were told that he would make the country more secure and make gas cheaper and keep people from coming into the country. He made up stories about ..read more
Garden Head
6M ago
I know I have a lot of blind spots in my garden, spaces that I don’t fully see, I might see them with some cloudy vision, but I’m seeing them more with my — what are those things that sharks have? Hold on, I have to google this — ok, ampullae of Lorenzini and apparently ..read more
Garden Head
9M ago
I lied. There are 16…
Ground covers are everything
Think in terms of layers: tree, shrub, ground
It’s helpful to have multiple nutrient cycling centers and a processing center to put cuttings even if you don’t intend to make proper compost out of it
Do the Chelsea chop in late May to make your perennials hardier
If you don’t have the time or money for a huge remediation of invasives, let vigorous natives fight them off for you: hayscented fern, chocolate white snakeroot, goldenrod, golden ragwort–they all have built-in boxing gloves and they love you and don’t want to see you get overwhelmed ..read more
Garden Head
9M ago
As I write this, the sounds of spring waft into my living room carried on a cool, gentle breeze. Lilting motifs of cardinal love songs rise above staccato chirps. The wind picks up the pearly, fermented air off the surrounding river and strums a hundred branches with their newly sprouted leaves. A dark spruce in the treeline frames a patch of sky and unhooks everything from time, turning this synaesthetic tapestry into a coded message that can hold every question and every answer about the mystery of all creation.
And then?
Cue the leaf blowers.
Every day for the last 61 days, life has been un ..read more
Garden Head
9M ago
Butterfly bush is not good for butterflies. Sorry. You had good intentions.
Leaves are supposed to fall on the ground. Otherwise we’d have no dirt and be standing on lava.
Wood mulch is for walking paths and establishing new plants, not permanent ground cover. Would you ever visit a mulch garden?
The most effective mulch is plants.
Lawns are basically 1980s wall-to-wall carpet. And not in a fun vintage way.
What’s the tackiest and most expensive lawn ornament? A yellow poison flag.
Gas powered leaf blowers are going the way of the cigarette and lead paint, and will be really uncool with ..read more
Garden Head
9M ago
This morning, I was fortunate to have a slice of time to sit on the porch with coffee before figuring out what to do with this mercifully rainy Sunday. A dude in a baseball cap walked by with his boxer in tow and seemed to shake his head disapprovingly at some offending thing in his line of vision—which was my front garden. He didn’t have earbuds in so he wasn’t responding to something beyond my earshot. His dog was behind him and not doing anything wrong, so it wasn’t directed at him. His gaze was definitely pointed at the general front line of my garden and the gesture seemed somehow obvious ..read more
Garden Head
9M ago
You can’t write about plants for very long without hitting a cultural speed bump. I’ve hit many along the way. Most recently, I was writing about Monotropa uniflora popping up like creatures from the abyss in the woods. It was listed in our database as Indian pipe and I sent an email to our Plant Records Archivist that set off a quick cascade of decisions resulting in the official common name being changed to Ghost pipe.
I have many examples of moments when we had to pan out and disrupt the status quo. And it’s not just about plant names, it’s the words we use to talk about plants and the stor ..read more
Garden Head
9M ago
What was the last garden you visited? Public or private, big or small? Imagine yourself moving through that garden.
If you are reading this, you are probably a gardener, and you probably know a lot about gardening and plants. As you move through that garden, imagine that all your gardening knowledge, the entire plant ID database in your head, all your knowledge of seasons and sun and shade and acid and riparian erosion control and xeriscaping and everything you know related to plants was erased from your head. And now imagine looking at the now nameless plants, the shrubs devoid of personality ..read more